It's the fifth time that an asteroid has been detected in space prior to impacting our planet—and a sign that we're getting better at this sort of thing.
ImageAn asteroid measuring around 10 feet wide has burnt up in the skies north of Iceland. This sort of thing happens from time to time, but this incident was notable in that the asteroid was spotted less two hours before the impact.Krisztián Sárneczky gets credit for the discovery, as the Hungarian astronomer spied the rock with a 24-inch telescope at the Piszkéstető observatory,to the European Space Agency. His initial observation came at 7:24 p.m. UTC on March 11, 2022.
Informed of the object’s existence, the MPC named it Sar2593. The center’s assessment systems churned out an impact probability at less than 1%, but Krisztián kept going, performing another 10 observations of the object while keeping in close contact with the MPC.
What’s more, the calculations showed that the inevitable impact would happen in less than an hour, between 9:21 and 9:25 p.m. UTC , and that the object would enter Earth’s atmosphere a few hundred miles north of Iceland. The incoming asteroid was not deemed a threat, as its brightness pointed to a rock no larger than 3 feet in diameter . Objects that small don’t tend to survive entry through the atmosphere, and roughly 10 asteroids of this size reach our planet each year.
The Meerkat alert prompted other astronomers to take a look, resulting in a slew of new observations, including viewings from an observatory in Kysuce, Slovakia. The new data resulted in an even more precise prediction of where it would enter Earth: roughly 87 miles south of Jan Mayen, an A rctic island located 1,190 miles northeast of Iceland. And at 21:22 UTC , it would strike Earth “less than two hours after being discovered,” according to ESA. No video or images were taken of the corresponding fireball, but infrasound detectors definitely noticed an anomaly.
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Asteroid spotted just before hitting Earth's atmosphere wows astronomersChelsea “Foxanne” Gohd joined Space.com in 2018 and is now a Senior Writer, writing about everything from climate change to planetary science and human spaceflight in both articles and on-camera in videos. With a degree in Public Health and biological sciences, Chelsea has written and worked for institutions including the American Museum of Natural History, Scientific American, Discover Magazine Blog, Astronomy Magazine and Live Science. When not writing, editing or filming something space-y, Chelsea 'Foxanne' Gohd is writing music and performing as Foxanne, even launching a song to space in 2021 with Inspiration4. You can follow her on Twitter chelsea_gohd and foxannemusic.
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